Multi-colinearity


Each winter the migration of birds.
The criss-cross walking of crabs, whole
                                                                of Christmas Island, how behind them
                           in the sand they leave the pattern of every body they know.

What we know is, we don't know
                                                      everything.
             You'd like to order what you see, prove
                           it, align facts. Mean. It's the great circle
routes across the Atlantic,
                                       how only on islands like these
is it so obvious the sky goes
around the earth. And sphere

of streetlight meaning moon.
                                        And the inside of the body
             strains at its tight edges out, to what
                                                                    might one day cause it pain—

Hundreds of birds I never knew the names for
are gone now, will no more
                                        follow one another in V-wedges
or stumble, charmingly, into cold ocean.
One day you'll wake up
                                        in a single bed and remember watching a yellow
             tree between the muntin bars, against grey sky

very like today's.
                           Every year until it's over
the birds will fly south, crabs will scuttle
                                                                   ten thousand body-lengths
            with only hope, memory, to guide them.
            We are all saying
                                        here is this breakable body of mine
            Oh world we didn't know until just now—


Harvest


In half daylight my sisters and I went out to harvest the bodies of men
those fragile things
                                 their skin the color of paper    cinnamon    polished light
and dark wood        marks
                                           on their shoulders from vaccinations
marks in their hearts where children
                                                     grew or girls they loved lived
once
              Like other crops we cultivated
                                                               many varieties
                                the hair of some was golden-orange as corn silk

All the bodies of the men were crying out
                                                                    in silence to be touched
there in the grey fog of morning
                                                       slender knuckles
and hair on the instep of the feet

                                                      the fields of the world are a cathedral
of love waiting to happen



Novice


All absence creates is longing.    Therefore between bells
I linger. I taste
                          what keeps with wind through
stones. Here are a hundred sisters who cannot
be enough: routine
                                is tonic, perfect
shift from sound to silence to sound but the fruit
of the tree is knowing
                                     outside the clouds are moving,
the water is moving, hands
are moving across bodies
                                        never mine.    I can smell
those hands.



Renaissance


It is the ridged roofing, tin and rust, gutter running
end to end, how sound ripples over it; a longing.

Rays from behind clouds, a prism, everything
I am is breaking open into light.  What wings

there are in the world, take flight.  Nothing
more than this (nothing more than this), being

between red brick and granite, radio towers' distant sighing:
although this is autumn, almost a spring.



Smooth stone, fox
MJM

There was one smooth stone he could not stop turning over in his hands
There were mottled marks on the stone
                                                                   and it rang in small sharp tones with mica
          Where her hands had been was the stone
                      and the water the stone came from

In the night he was walking through blocks of rowhouses
          and the fox ran between houses, out of his sight

The fox watching the walking man

The stone's invisible, insensible eye

The man, turning only his own thoughts, so like a human

Light from streetlamps, closed shop windows' rough glow
                                                                                 the night smelled like uprooted lavendar

Everywhere he walked the fox was following
Across the parking lot its white breast
Its padding feet, stranger
                                       than a cat's movement, its swayful tail

If the fox were gone it would be only the misplaceable stone and the man in the world